Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday August 14, 2008 @03:23PM
from the leisure-suit-larry-is-on-the-way dept.

TuringTest writes "In an attempt to bring the Wii closer to the hardcore gamer's taste, Sega is preparing to release MadWorld, a violent 'hack and slash' game. This has brought attention from family-conscious lobbies: 'The decision to release a violent game on a console which has based its reputation on family fun has shocked anti-violence pressure groups. Mediawatch-UK, Britain's longest-running pressure group campaigning for decency in TV, films and games, said MadWorld will "spoil" the Wii.' The game features black & white cel-shaded graphics, except for the blood blobs which are in brilliant red. MadWorld is announced to be released in early 2009."

I've been wishing they'd bring a few more adult oriented games to the wii for a while.Sure it's a fantastic console for parties and for my nephew but the childish games wear on you after a while for solo gaming.

Whoever modded parent 'funny' hasn't heard of Dark Room Sex Game [www.itu.dk][No images, mostly SFW], playable with wiimotes and computers with blue tooth. It's obviously not a Nintendo title. But if there were games similar to this for the console itself, there would be a fair amount of money to be made.

Dark Room Sex Wii Game? No images? So basically you wave your rod in the air before a completely dark screen while picturing yourself waving it inside a real woman? Wow, sounds amazing, I gotta buy this thing right now!

Jokes apart, if they made more Wii games that don't have anything displayed on the screen, I'd probably buy a Wii, as so far I don't since I don't even have a TV. But if you just need headphones then that's cool..

Why do people keep making the mistake of calling Violent video games Adult oriented? Most adults are not male between the ages of 12 and 25. Most of the Adults I know tend to play casual games and Ultra Mega Bloodfest IV.Also please get over it. Resident Evil, Bully, Hitman, and Manhunt all are violent games like this one which we are speaking of.

We live in the world where media targeting 16 year old boys is label "Mature" or "Adult" content.

Not only do I want to play games besides nintendo's "Fun for the whole family you don't personally have," but the wii NEEDS to have those games.

On boards dedicated to consoles, theres a lot of whining about "casual" players destroying gaming with the wii. It basically comes down to 13-21 year old boys wanting to kill stuff, it has nothing to do with how serious of a gamer one is. The reason it matters is that they spend the most on games, and I think it's no coincidence that the 3rd party offerings on other systems (IE, games not from microsoft on the XBOX 360) are generally of a higher caliber than the wii.

The wii has a ton of "shovelware." Companies realize that almost anything they put on the wii (no matter how cliche, buggy, or just generally lacking in fun) will be profitable, since the people who own the wii are on average read less reviews, have lower expectations, and complain less about the duds (personal hypothesis there.) Ninjabread man was called by almost anyone who played it the worst game of this generation of consoles, every review article read "do not buy this game for anyone!" But I'm pretty sure they made a profit. They couldn't have spent more than a grand developing it, and enough confused grandparents bought it for their grandchildren who own a wii (or quite possibly another console) that they made their money back.

So the wii is getting a ton of games that should not be played. Since there are no "adult" games on it, you don't get the key demographic of teenage boys buying games for it, you never get any quality games for the system that aren't from nintendo. Anyone who puts time and effort into their game makes only a little bit more profit than if you ported solitare to the wii and sold it for $20.

It's made worse by the fact that apperantly, the moral nannies have decided that since so many kids have the wii, no adult games should come out on the wii ever.

It's really too bad, if the teenage boys could be enticed to the wii, I think you'd see some of the best games ever coming out for it, combining the unique control scheme with innovative new ideas for games and a sufficient budget to make it work. Instead we're going to get a console with a promising controller, some great games from nintendo, and a bunch of crap that will go the way of ET for the atari.

The sad truth is that the Wii doesn't need those games. It is selling like crazy, even now well over a year after its release and so far I haven't seen numbers that this trend is going to change, even things like the much more powerful Xbox360 selling for 50EUR less then the Wii in europe hasn't put a dent in the sales. The Wiis whole concept simply isn't build around classical games, instead it seems to be build around accessories, Wiimote, Balance Board, Zapper, Wii Wheel and so on. Accessories seem to give people something that they can instantly understand, which you can't have with classical game, which is also why you always see happy people jumping around in front of a TV in Wii commercials and never really much of the actual game.

When it comes to 'normal' games I have given up all hope for the Wii and never really had it much to begin with. Nintendo is doing something completly different with the Wii and simply doesn't care about the market segments of Xbox360 and PS3, when some third party still manages to sneak such a title on the Wii, fine, but there are always exceptions to the rule.

The interesting part is what will happen five years down the road? Will people still swing their controller as tennis rack and golf club or will they be tired of it and move on to the next trendy thing? I don't really know, but for the moment Nintendo seems to be doing more then fine with what they do.

Though your points are clear, they do not imply a necessity of Wii having games based on explicit violence.

First, I do not see how the time spent playing games translates into profit. The only thing that translates to profit is number of games sold. Now, if a game is lame, then the next version is unlikely to bought, but lame does not translate into lack of opportunities to knock on the honest working women of the world. In fact sports related, where both the violence and competition is highly stylized

We had to chase the teddy bears into their cuddle bunkers, and then tickle them out with machine hugs and fun throwers. They say the more soldiers you tickle, the easier it gets. Well, sir, it doesn't.

Heck, Red Steel was featured in the launch ads for the Wii. It may not be the greatest game, but when the guy says "All right, get a gun" and the player starts shooting people, well, I think that's pretty violent.

Violence isn't even a problem. Sex and violence is a problem. Horror and violence is a problem. Violence with a graphic, realistic portrayal is a problem. (When I say problem here, I'm talking about it being a problem for some people, not necessarily meaning that it is a problem per se or that I personally have a problem with it.)

Just violence though? Please. My Wii came with a boxing game. Boxing is a violent sport. Super Mario Galaxy? You kill things by jumping on them and hitting them. How is that not violent?

Strangely, violence and disturbing content is not always a problem though: see any SpongeBob game.

Ah, of course. They're more of the sex, violence, and horror style of games. You can do you violence and sex without the horror, and we can do you violence and horror without the sex, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But you can't have sex and horror without the violence.

I knew a mother who did not mind at all if her kids played Doom. I know because I asked her if it was OK when they came over to do some multi-player on our home network with my son own day. She said that she had watched her kids play the solo game and it seemed ok afterall they were just killl monsters. A few days later I heard from my son that she had pulled the game from his friends computer. It seems that she had never seen them use the chain saw on the zombies before. Of course all the other death

It was unfinished, had a lousy sound track, and a totally linear plot. The dialog was abysmal! I'll admit that the jokes were pretty good (NHM forever?) but that didn't make up for the shallow gameplay. (Minigames notwithstanding.) Hell, even Zelda on the NES had a Master Quest when you ran through it once. This game was just "Hey, do you want to do it again?"

It had so much more potential, and they just ruined it. I'm glad it didn't kill ad

It really was a big let down in terms of gameplay. However, I never had a problem with the dialog and actually though the cut-scenes were by far the best and made me feel a lot better spending money on it. I thought Zero Punctuation summed it up the best [escapistmagazine.com].

I mean, it's not like they were tricked by some game presented as "Princess Peach Pony Adventures" rated E and discovered a secret level which involved skinning people alive. They know from the start it's a violent game, Sega makes no secret about it, and if their console is really for "family fun" and they have kids... don't buy it.

Exactly. I really don't understand how video games are any different from VHS or DVD or the web. All can be used for kid-friendly fun. All can be used to watch people getting killed / touched in rude places.

I don't understand where this whole "games are for kids" thing came from anyhow. The early arcade games (e.g. Space Invaders) which popularised the medium were played by twenty-somethings not pre-teens.

Mediawatch-UK would like to respond to your logical post with the following reply: "Think of the children! Oh, and also 'terrorism.' Yeah, we might be able to shoehorn a terrorism scare in there somehow... I've got it! MadWorld might be used by terrorists in their training! Is it banned yet?"

They're more afraid of little Jimmy going to his friend Steve's to play it. That little Steve is such a horrible influence.

Well, I fail to see how that's any different from going over to Steve to play an ultra-violent PC game. Or to watch a splatter movie on dad's VHS. Or going over to Steve, which got someone to buy him a bottle of whiskey, bypassing age restrictions. Or Steve discovering his dad's porn stash and, well, I guess caring _is_ sharing;)

How dare they attempt to make more money by attempting to appeal to a different segment of the market! Just because all of the games released up to the now have been family-friendly, does not mean that there were NEVER any plans to release any other type. That sort of thinking will limit your income possibilities.

In other news, family-conscious lobbies turn their attention to a ban on cars, when it is found that teenagers have sex in them. The fact that most of those teenagers were conceived in them is overlooked due to a chronic inability to perceive irony....

"Family friendly?" Right now I live alone, but I have two grown daughters; we are family. I used to play Quake with them on our networked computers when they were teenagers. So to me, a violent, bloody video game IS family-friendly.

Mediawatch-UK is a spinoff of the now defunct (read: dead) Mary Whitehouse, probably the whingiest person on the planet during her existence. They're quite genuine, hard as that may be to believe, and have an unimpeachable reputation for complaining about things.

It's not like there aren't other games rated M on the Wii. No More Heroes [wikipedia.org] is the first that comes to mind. There's also the Resident Evil series, I think Godfather and Scarface were ported over, etc.

From the video, the only unique thing about this game is the decision to make everything black and white but for the blood, which is bright red. Fewer colors is now a feature!

Overall, a pretty lame publicity grab. "Our game is so hardcore your mom won't let you buy it!" What they don't say is "Our game is so boring you won't play it after the novelty wears off and you've shown it to all of your friends."

If anyone's making a publicity grab, it's the Daily Mail. The last we saw them on Slashdot, they had come up with a dubious iPhone Nano rumour. They're making a reach for online marketshare by coming up with nonsense and starting storms in teacups, basically taking their approach to newspaper sales but applying it their website. This is a publication which runs features demonising games at random intervals [rllmukforum.com] because it gives them something other than Jews, gays and foreigners [wikipedia.org] to attack. They are the ones who

What?! Stop examining the situation sensibly, you must be OUTRAGED. Disengage your logical hooks, heretic! Think of the children! Do not think of the difference between reality and fiction! GRRR! That makes you angry! Use lots of exclamation marks!

We can piss-off these anti-violence people all we want, and what are they going to do about it?
So if I understand this...you're challenging anti-violence people to a fight? Maybe there is a lesson here....

How can these people complain. Being cartoon graphics (cel-shaded cartoons) then how can the Wii not be its best home? The XBox 360 and the PS3 fight it out for realism, the Wii wins on fun and cartoon.

If only these people could complain about something more worthwhile, like the fact that the real problem is the badly brought up children and not the game.

Yes, I am one of those dirty filthy casuals that plays games to *gasp *horror* *shock* enjoy them. I tend to like the games that have innovative and fun gameplay. Unique visual audio styles are a plus.

Perhaps I'm just too old for the current definition of hardcore games and hardcore gamers but what I don't really get is how the number of pixels pushed or the volume of blood makes a game for the hardcore gamer.

I'd expect the hardcore gamer to want intricate and complex yet responsive control schemes that reward having faster-than-framerate reactions. Requiring six liquid cooled video cards just to render the game on its lowest setting or requiring a TARDIS built into the circulatory system of every mook to handle the amount of blood they spray when killed doesn't mean its "hardcore" to me. It generally says its cheaper to hire graphic designers than it is people capable of putting together a solid game.

I'm not a big Wii fan and part of that is due to the fact its games don't interest me. However, I don't like that hardcore gaming is being equated with violence (and inevitably, sex). The Wii does come across as sort of a child-centric system to me but adding titles with blood won't necessarily make me think of it as more mature and won't make me think of it as 'hardcore'.

Personally, I don't think it gets more hardcore then Civilization. There's very little, if any, blood in the game but it's the complexity of the gameplay and the dedication one has have for it that makes it something of an elite gaming experience. If we 'hardcore' gamers don't demand complexity and innovation in games then all we're going to get is Halo/GTA clones.

While I do not enjoy violent games the notions that this game will "ruin" the wii is absolutely absurd. Will users of the wii be forced to play the game? Of course not. If you dont like the game dont play it.

In an attempt to bring the World closer to the hardcore warmonger's taste, Lockheed Martin is preparing to release new cluster munitions, a violent 'hack and slash' type of bomblet loaded with shrapnel and high explosives. This has brought attention from family-conscious lobbies: 'The decision to release a violent weapon from a nation which has based its reputation on family fun has shocked anti-violence pressure groups. Mediawatch-UK, Britain's longest-running pressure group campaigning for decency in TV, films and warfare, said Lockheed Martin will "spoil" the World.' The weapon features drab steel casings, except for the bomblets which are in brilliant yellow. Cluster bombs are widely available, but new ones are announced to be released in early 2009.

In an attempt to bring the World closer to the hardcore warmonger's taste, Lockheed Martin is preparing to release new cluster munitions, a violent 'hack and slash' type of bomblet loaded with shrapnel and high explosives. This has brought attention from family-conscious lobbies: 'The decision to release a violent weapon from a nation which has based its reputation on family fun has shocked anti-violence pressure groups. Mediawatch-UK, Britain's longest-running pressure group campaigning for decency in TV, films and warfare, said Lockheed Martin will "spoil" the World.' The weapon features drab steel casings, except for the bomblets which are in brilliant yellow. Cluster bombs are widely available, but new ones are announced to be released in early 2009.

I have so far once seen wii's available in a store - though not at a time when I had $250 to spare.

And of course up until now most people have been playing the wii-sports that comes with it. If we introduce violent games as well, the demand for the Wii amongst young angry boys might go up, at which point I might never get a Wii...

A nanny-knows-best, Mary Whitehouse-loving bunch of fucking morons, proving to the rest of the world that the UK will not be found lacking when it comes to the complete abdication of parental responsibility and self-control.

To MediaWatch-UK, you bunch of lack-witted, thumb-sucking buboes...

Point 1:
Just because the sensationalist hacks at the Daily Fail [voiceoftheturtle.org] run a story about your latest bout of whining does not lend any credence to your crusade against the right-thinking portion of the British populace and their desire to be able to decide for themselves what is or isn't appropriate entertainment for themselves and their families.

Point 2:
I have a DVD player. When I have children, they can watch Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen's back-catalogue [wikipedia.org], High School Musical [wikipedia.org] and Bambi [wikipedia.org] to their hearts' content. I can use it to watch Oldboy [wikipedia.org], Battle Royale [wikipedia.org] and Cannibal Holocaust [wikipedia.org]. It is up to me to control who watches what. It is my choice. If someone has the money to purchase a Wii, and then to purchase games for it, and yet is too fucking stupid to make an informed choice about the games they buy then there is no hope for humanity. If things have become *that* bad then "Campaigning for decency and accountability in the media" is just polishing the brass on the Titanic. Seriously, you'd be far better off doing something useful like chemically castrating these bozos.

Point 3:
Following on, Nintendo markets the Wii on its main strength, family-fun and party games. This is not out of some altruistic desire to promote family values, it is because it cannot compete with the 360 or PS3 when it comes to graphical content. Nintendo play to their system's strengths which are a unique and novel control system and a large catalogue of party games. I enjoy playing Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz but I also enjoy playing Red Steel and Call Of Duty 3. Both of which were available ON THE DAY OF LAUNCH.

Points 4-8:
This is not the first game to be released for Wii that I would consider inappropriate for the whole family based on violent or sexual content...nor will it be the last. Games already released which
Alone In The Dark [wikipedia.org] - Survival Horror

The entity speaks directly through Anna, demanding the stone, which Edward doesn't have, before attempting to kill him. No matter what Edward throws at the possessed Anna, she merely shrugs it off and keeps coming after him, and he is only able to permanently kill her by setting her on fire. After proceeding to another elevator shaft and jumping down into an elevator, Edward meets Sarah Flores, an art dealer. They are then attacked by more possessed humans...

Jimmy can also kiss certain boys. The ESRB claimed it was fully aware of the homosexual content when they gave it a T rating.Other sexual themes involve a gym teacher who is stated to have hit on the girls in school, dissecting a rat's testicles, and a student reading a men's magazine.

Call of Duty 3 [wikipedia.org] - World War II First Person Shooter
Shooting people, throwing grenades, shooting flammable barrels next to people to incinerate them. While not graphic, this is a war-themed game that was available at UK release, and which I wouldn't let children play.

That really burns my biscuits! You mean Sega is going to force games containing content unsuitable for my impressionably proginy onto my Wii, strip the parental controls, and then force my kids to see them, with me in handcuffs so I can't properly supervise what they're doing?

What's that you say? I'd have to buy it? On purpose? And you're sure the disc won't jump out of its case and load itself up? And I won't be prevented from setting the parental controls in the wii, nor from monitoring my kids?

Just like letting gays get married will somehow ruin marriage for everyone else. Having a violent video game on Wii will ruin it for everyone. (as if Manhunt 2, Call of Duty 3, etc weren't already on the Wii).

There is a certain personality type that wants to "protect" the lifestyles of other people by projecting their own values onto the rest of the world. And they believe they cannot be happy until everyone else shares their world view.

And those people are called Liberal Democrats, which is why there isn't a ton of/. uproar over it. Take a look at the Family Entertainment Protection Act [wikipedia.org], sponsored by democrats Clinton, Lieberman, Johnson, and Bayh. After all, it takes a village to raise a child right? Isn't this what you all want?